037 A Study on Wille zum Leben
''- Dr. REDACTED Lee'' Preface The tenacity of life has always been a great mystery among academics. It's blatant irrationality and persistence have bemused intellectuals for centuries as philosophers and empiricists alike scrambled to explain the Wille zum Leben in terms of science and in the woefully misguided vagaries of Romanticism. Our novel approach of demistifying the most fundamental constructs of anthropologie here at Project Babel have brought us to the hypothesis of applying Darwinian postulates to explain why sentient entities exhibit a will to live as well as explore the various differences in the magnitude of a will to live among specimens correlated with numerous factors. Established Principles The definition for the term "organism" that we will be using is any thermodynamic system with an organized molecular structure that can reproduce and evolve via principles of natural selection. As such, the cell, the smallest unit of organic life, is nonetheless considered to be "living" due to its abilities to reproduce and evolve as well as maintain homeostasis through metabolic reactions. Furthermore, the negative entropy of anabolism makes the cellular structure organized and relatively consistent. We have so far established that the cell, a non-sentient entity, is an organism. The Homo sapiens (referred to as "humans" in the following texts) is also an organism. The human structure is synthesized anabolically and in negative entropy, can reproduce, and can evolve. However, the human is different from the cell in that it is sentient - actually sapient. When one regards the presence of the will to live in both organisms, it can be observed through even a colloquial perception that the cell exhibits no will to live whereas the neurotypical human does. In fact, no microorganism, plant, or insect demonstrates a will to live as concluded by our previous experiments* whereas organisms from higher domains of life such as mammals and primates do. Why is this the case? The most prevalent hypothesis is that the will to live can only be acquired when a "cutoff level" of cognitive functioning is achieved. Higher-level cognitive programming enabling sensory perception, associated emotions, and memory must be present in order for the will to live to form. Microorganisms, plants, and insects are, for all intents and purposes, walking chemical compounds, only a little more self-aware than rocks but nonetheless trapped in their predetermined compulsions to maintain homeostasis, a sort of "biological inertia". They have no will to live because they cannot experience higher levels of sentience - there is no self-aware meaning attached to the concept of homeostasis, the desire to survive. Mammals, primates, and the like, on the other hand, do possess the will to live along with these higher levels of sentience. It seems that the will to live is directly correlated with the level of sentience, with higher sentience correlated with a more nuanced will to live. These sentient organisms have responded in severe manners to the near-death simulations compared to microorganisms, which made little to no responses to them. However, an interesting phenomenon occurs to this trend when organisms evolve from sentience to sapience, as seen in the Homo sapiens. The average magnitude of the will to live in given samples of the human population appears to decrease, as commonly observed in cases of suicidal thoughts and depressive episodes. Existential dread is common in sapient organisms and the questioning of life increases as opposed to an unconditional desire to survive. Thus, the will to live overall decreases as organisms achieve sapience. Outline Given this background, there are three primary investigations to be conducted in this study: 1. The legitimacy of the superficial decrease in the will to live in suicidal organisms will be evaluated. Near-death and pain-inducing simulations will be performed on the subjects in a controlled experimental setting to determine whether the will to live is truly absent in suicidal organisms or simply repressed, but still present in an instinctual sense. 2. The role of sensory perception and pain as well as the emotional processes associated with the perception of pain will be explored as a possible contributor to the will to live. Controlled experiments quantitatively comparing the will to live in control specimens and artificially engineered specimens lacking pain receptors will be performed. 3. The precise boundaries of the classifications of "non-sentient," "pseudo-sentient," "sentient," and "sapient" organisms will be clarified through extensive laboratory trials on various representative specimens, along with determining the fundamental differences in mechanisms between "pseudo-sentient" and "sentient" organisms. TO BE CONTINUED Note from Dr. Herzog: finish this you lazy shit *See 018 and 019 on the quantitative interpretation of the difference in responses between non-sentient organisms and sentient organisms to near-death and pain-inducing simulations.